The prestigious Venice Film Festival is celebrating movies with a homosexual theme or character by awarding a Queer Lion prize.

The new honour, a take on the festival's main Golden Lion prize, is the culmination of four years of negotiations to introduce a gay element to the annual event.

Competition director Daniel Casagrande says, "We aren't looking for the next Brokeback Mountain. We are just looking for films that accurately portray gay characters or themes." A small international jury will select the winner, who will be presented with a gold plaque featuring the Venice Lion winged logo with the rainbow colours of the gay pride flag on the wings.

The Venice Festival, which begins later this month (29Aug07) isn't the first movie event to celebrate homosexual film work - the Berlin International Film Festival has been handing out a similar prize, the Teddy Award, for 21 years as an offshoot of its Golden Bear award.

The Queer Lion award is a take on Venice Film Festival's main prize - the Golden Lion Films with a gay theme or character are to be recognised with a new award at the Venice Film Festival. The Queer Lion award, a take on the festival's main Golden Lion prize, will go to the best full-length film featuring a gay theme or character.

Competition director Daniel Casagrande said it had taken four years of negotiations to introduce the award.

He has said he expects "around 10 or 12" films to be candidates for the inaugural prize.

He added: "We aren't looking for the next Brokeback Mountain. We are just looking for films that accurately portray gay characters or themes."

Gay pride

Films entering the main competition are eligible for the award, as are other films being shown at the festival, which runs from 29 August to 8 September.

A small international jury will select the winner, who will be presented with a gold plaque featuring the Venice Lion winged logo with the rainbow colours of the gay pride flag on the wings.

The Berlin International Film Festival has been handing out a similar prize, the Teddy Award, for the past 21 years as an offshoot of its Golden Bear award.

Hollywood is widely considered to be one of the more liberal cities in the United States, where gay producers and directors can work without fear of professional discrimination. But it’s also a place where actors risk losing their careers if they dare come out of the closet. On the small screen, lesbians hold ratings power (see: Ellen DeGeneres’s huge talk-show market share, and Rosie O’Donnell’s single-handed boost to The View’s ratings), yet they’re not represented fairly in mainstream movies on television or at the local cineplex. When publicizing Brokeback Mountain, director Ang Lee’s breakthrough 2005 film about gay cowboys, stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger went out of their way to let the world know that offscreen, they’re straight as arrows.

Matthew Hays, author of The View From Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press, $26.95), is well aware of the paradox — signs of the turmoil and tension between North American culture and its portrayal on screen.

With the mixed bag of interviews comes an array of opinions on what it means to be a gay filmmaker. John Cameron Mitchell, director and star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Shortbus — and one of the more optimistic of the bunch — tells Hays it’s great to be a gay filmmaker because, as outsiders, there’s nothing to lose, and they can enjoy a freedom that others don’t. “...The arts and media are flooded with queer people because media and arts are about surfaces and realities and codes and metaphor,” he tells Hays.

Others, like Almódovar, don’t refer to their sexuality at all. Instead, he brings attention to other major influences in his work, such as his longlasting affection for his late mother. Producer and director Joel Shumacher, whom Hays refers to in the book’s introduction, shuns labels altogether: “I don’t recall anyone referring to Bill Clinton as our Caucasian, heterosexual, WASP, male ex-president. In other words, he’s normal, and everyone with a label isn’t.”

A good point, but Hays begs to differ. Writers like the Catholic Graham Greene and Jewish playwright Harold Pinter have been informed by their religious and cultural background; the experience of growing up homosexual and being subject to discrimination is bound to be a major influence on one’s work, he says. “[Shumacher’s opinion] is understandable, that it might limit them artistically to be seen as a gay director. But the counterargument is that the labels have become less significant over the years. Coming forward as gay is not going to ruin your career.”

Unless, of course, you’re Richard Chamberlain, Hays points out. In his smoldering younger days, Chamberlain played implicity straight alpha males on television (Dr. Kildare), heroes (The Three Musketeers, Julius Caesar) and gorgeous, mature lovers (The Thorn Birds). Only after coming out in his 2004 autobiography, Shattered Love, did he dare to appear in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink cameo in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

“Some [filmmakers and actors] didn’t want to be labelled, but it turns out that being gay or lesbian does indeed inform a lot of their work,” says Hays. As Patricia Rozema, the Canadian director of I Heard the Mermaids Singing, says in the book, “the more personal a work is, the more successful it is.”

Hays, a journalist who writes film features and reviews for the Montreal Mirror and teaches at Concordia University, says he was surprised that his is the first book of compiled interviews with accomplished gay and lesbian filmmakers. “The people I was interviewing said they couldn’t believe this hadn’t been done before. It seems like such a no-brainer, because there’s been so much written about gay representation and gay cinema,” he says. Hays held one of the more interesting interviews with Don Roos, the funny but cynical director of the award-winning The Opposite of Sex (1998) and the far less successful Ben Affleck/ Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Bounce released two years later. Roos brings up a point that many straight viewers may miss — namely, that Brokeback Mountain was a token gay flick that “took up a lot of space, that could have been filled by smaller, independent films with gay characters,” says Roos. “There are people in the business who will point to [that movie] and say, ‘We’re not bigoted, we made Brokeback Mountain.’”

That’s a concern shared by many in the industry, says Hays. “Roos’s worry is that even though Brokeback did a lot of good things, that would allow studio execs to say, ‘We’ve done our bit; we’ve made a gay cowboy movie, and now we can move on and make films like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.’”

The question remains among filmmakers of all stripes: Is it more important to portray gays in a realistic light in the Hollywood mainstream, or is it better to keep making smaller indie films for mostly gay audiences? To Hays, any fair portrayal of a gay or lesbian character in high-budget Hollywood films owes everything to the cash-strapped risk-takers who toil in relative obscurity.

“Brokeback wouldn’t have existed without [independent films like] Go Fish, Poison, and I Heard the Mermaids Singing,” says Hays. “Those smaller films awakened the studios to the possibilities, and what was going on. Indie films blazed a trail.”

The View From Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers gets a Vancouver book launch Aug. 22 at The Century House (432 Richards), 9:30 p.m. Info: 604 687-4233.

Disagree-The whole labeling thing seems really tired. Gay film, Catholic film, Black film, Nebraska film, ugh, just get over it. The view that there is only so much “room” for gay films (or any other flavor you choose) assumes there is a limit on the number spaces available and therefore someone (who?) has to be careful about doling out the spaces to only “worthy” applicants. Good talented people will continue to make good films (and often bad ones).

Also don’t agree about Jake & Heath. Seems to me they never “went out of their way” as described, but lord knows they were ask about it by the press at every possible occasion.MHO

Disagree-The whole labeling thing seems really tired. Gay film, Catholic film, Black film, Nebraska film, ugh, just get over it. The view that there is only so much “room” for gay films (or any other flavor you choose) assumes there is a limit on the number spaces available and therefore someone (who?) has to be careful about doling out the spaces to only “worthy” applicants. Good talented people will continue to make good films (and often bad ones).

Also don’t agree about Jake & Heath. Seems to me they never “went out of their way” as described, but lord knows they were ask about it by the press at every possible occasion.MHO

I agree with you here, jackster. Above all, BBM is a great film. And Heath and Jake are great actors.

His [i.e., Matt Damon's] one movie regret was in not taking a lead role in Brokeback Mountain (the leads were originally offered to himself and Joaquin Phoenix), but he opted for roles in The Talented Mr Ripley and All The Pretty Horses instead.

("I was doing a gay movie, then a cowboy movie. I couldn't follow it up with a gay cowboy movie!") But otherwise, his career couldn't be in better shape.

I'm sorry -- I forgot to get where this is from, who put out this list, Top 50 sex scenes ever in movies (excluding porn). I like how they describe FNIT sex. But of course it should be more than halfway up on the list, we would say. (I can find the site with the whole listing, if anyone wants me to.)

kathy

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23. Brokeback Mountain (2005)Dir: Ang Lee Sleeping bag sex is awkward in the best of times, so having your first homosexual experience in a two-man tent is really stacking the deck. But the thing that makes "Brokeback Mountain"'s key sex scene so effective is its utter lack of planning. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) wind up huddled together for warmth -- the gold standard of come-ons -- and when Jack makes an awkward pass an angry, heated struggle ensues that morphs into some rough and urgent sex. Shot in almost complete darkness and lasting under a minute (!), the scene manages to subvert the tittering expectations of the viewing public and also offer a credibly awkward and confused rendering of how such a scenario might play out. Almost entirely dependent on sound, Ledger and Gyllenhaal make more of a couple of gasps and growls (along with a jangling belt buckle and twin zipper zips) than many sex scenes can do with mood music and the fully monty. â€”Michelle Orange

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They were respectful of each other's opinions, each glad to have a companion where none had been expected.

I'm sorry -- I forgot to get where this is from, who put out this list, Top 50 sex scenes ever in movies (excluding porn). I like how they describe FNIT sex. But of course it should be more than halfway up on the list, we would say. (I can find the site with the whole listing, if anyone wants me to.)

kathy

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23. Brokeback Mountain (2005)Dir: Ang Lee Sleeping bag sex is awkward in the best of times, so having your first homosexual experience in a two-man tent is really stacking the deck. But the thing that makes "Brokeback Mountain"'s key sex scene so effective is its utter lack of planning. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) wind up huddled together for warmth -- the gold standard of come-ons -- and when Jack makes an awkward pass an angry, heated struggle ensues that morphs into some rough and urgent sex. Shot in almost complete darkness and lasting under a minute (!), the scene manages to subvert the tittering expectations of the viewing public and also offer a credibly awkward and confused rendering of how such a scenario might play out. Almost entirely dependent on sound, Ledger and Gyllenhaal make more of a couple of gasps and growls (along with a jangling belt buckle and twin zipper zips) than many sex scenes can do with mood music and the fully monty. â€”Michelle Orange

Thanks kathy! It would be interesting to know the rest of the list, and how the others compare to BBM...

BEIJING, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- The education authorities for the first time publicized 171 new coinages collected from the latest common usage among the Chinese, including "house slaves" which refers to young people who are under great pressure to pay for huge housing mortgages.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) issued a report over the weekend on new words which were coined in the past several years and are prevailingly used today.

Li Yuming, a senior MOE official who is in charge of standardizing the use of modern Chinese language, told Xinhua on Monday, "Those new coinages reflect rapid cultural and social changes in recent years as well as thriving new concepts in our daily lives."

Some new words were from political jargons, such as "ba rong ba chi," a catch-phrase literally translated as "eight honors and eight disgraces," which was initiated by President Hu Jintao last year for promoting socialist ethics and personal integrity.

Most of the 171 coinages, however, show the cultural and social sides of the Chinese life.

"Smiling Beijing" ("Wei xiao Beijing") is a phrase created by the Beijing Olympic organizing committee to encourage Beijing residents as hosts of the upcoming Olympics to give more smiles and friendliness to outsiders.

Some metropolitan young couples, highly educated and smartly paid, are now trying a life style of purposed separate residence but short of divorce. Those couples, who willingly limit intimacy with each others for keeping personal space and romantic sense of marriage, are called "semi-honey couples" ("ban tang fu qi").

Quite a few double income no kids (DINK) couples in big cities are now favoring to raise pets and give them very comfortable living. Such a new kind of DINK families are labeled as "ding chong jia ting," or "DINK families with pets." Fashionable young Chinese tend to euphemistically use "duan bei" referring to male homosexuals. "Duan bei," with a literal meaning of "brokeback," was borrowed from the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, a R-rated American film directed by Ang Lee.

Li said the release of the 171 new words is based on a two-year research on more than 900 million words and phrases in daily use of the Chinese language. The MOE, together with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Institute of Linguistics, has built a huge database garnering new words with the highest frequency of use since 2005. The linguists picked new words from mass media and the Internet, analyzing their social, psychological and semantic connotations. They also studied the influence of words borrowed from foreign languages.

Movies are supposed to be about getting lost in emotion. But one scientist has broken down the film industry to cold, hard facts.

A psychology professor at UC Davis, has done a statistical study of thousands of movies to determine what makes them critical darlings or box-office hits.

Films that earn awards and praise from reviewers tend to be R-rated and based on a true story or a prize-winning play or novel, says professor Dean Simonton. The original author or the director usually have written the screenplay.

"I had this hope that there was a difference between blockbusters and really great art films - films that can be considered great cinematic creations," said Simonton, who presented his findings Friday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco. "It was gratifying to find out they're very, very different and you can find out what's different about them."

Simonton says he's not a movie buff - "I'm a consumer like everyone else" - but in his longtime studies of genius, creativity and leadership, he started compiling data about the collaborative process of filmmaking in 1999. He's also done a study comparing the Oscars with the Razzies.

Simonton, an expert on human creativity, is the author of "Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity." He is at work on a new book, "Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics."

"Exceptional creativity is frequently viewed as a highly individualistic phenomenon," Simonton said. "But there is at least one type of artistic expression that is extremely prominent, often highly profitable and inherently collective in nature: the feature film. Motion pictures provide a valuable research site for investigating group artistic creativity under real-world conditions." "Brokeback Mountain" is a prime example of what Simonton discovered. It was rated R, had an 87 percent approval rating on the Metacritic.com Web site and it came out at the height of prestige-picture time in December 2005. It featured a top-notch creative team, including director Ang Lee and screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, working from a short story by Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx. The film cost $14 million to make and grossed nearly $175 million worldwide. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won three.

But then there are exceptions, like this summer's "Knocked Up." It's also very much an R-rated movie, but it's a comedy that's gotten 85 percent positive reviews on Metacritic and it came out in June. Judd Apatow, who has long enjoyed a cult following, both wrote and directed it. The film cost an estimated $33 million to make and so far has grossed $164 million worldwide. It's probably not going to win any Oscars, but who knows?

"All these things are just statistical relationships - there are always exceptions to every finding you have," Simonton said. "You'll have a film that really shouldn't have success but they have something quirky going for them ... 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,' it's just a quirky thing.

"As a consequence," he added, "Hollywood falls back on sequels and remakes. Even though you've seen them before, you know they've succeeded in earlier versions."

Stephen Whitty, chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, says Simonton's findings weren't terribly surprising.

"Anybody watching the Oscars even casually knows that they tend to reward certain things they love - they love biopics, they love when a pretty woman puts on some ugly makeup to play a character in trouble," said Whitty, critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. "They're not going to spend three or four hours of prime time rewarding movies that flopped badly at the box office."

But Whitty pointed out that one of the rare recent times that his group and the Academy Awards have matched up was with 2003's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," which was a big-budget fantasy sequel as well as a huge box-office hit.

More often, the group prides itself on singling out movies that aren't obvious Oscar bait, like "Mulholland Dr." and "Far From Heaven."

"Our best-picture winners, very few I would say were major hits because a lot of them tend to be smaller, more serious movies," he said. "They don't depend on special effects so they tend not to cost as much as most movies."

Such thinking - and Simonton's research - prove something awards expert Tom O'Neil has long suspected: "Critics are supposed to be guiding American moviegoers. This study proves they're taking their own esoteric side trip."

"Critics are academic types who want to prove how smart they are. They're professional grouches who think a critic's job is to be critical," said O'Neil, columnist for theenvelope.com Web site. "Unfortunately, great critics tend to be social misfits with extraordinary powers of observation. Being misfits, they tend to bash sentimental movies because they remind them of a loving, nurturing world to which they do not belong."

A great example of this, he said, came in 2002. The best-picture winner at the Oscars was Ron Howard's uplifting "A Beautiful Mind" (which was based on a prize-winning book about a true story) but several critics' groups gave their top honors to David Lynch's dreamlike "Mulholland Dr."

"Even though," O'Neil points out, "David Lynch said publicly he had no idea what the movie was about."

The relationship between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman in Star Wars has been voted the "least plausible" by film fans in a new survey.

The two played Senator Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones. Audiences were not convinced that there was enough electricity between the pair to tempt Skywalker from his Jedi vows.

But the soggy couple were in esteemed company, according to the poll, which surveyed 3000 movie-goers for film advertising company Pearl and Dean.

Some (once) real-life couples fared barely any better.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, then the duo dubbed Bennifer, came in second for their uncomfortable performances in Gigli, while Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman earned a mention for Eyes Wide Shut.

Affleck landed a second top-10 mention for his outing with Kate Beckinsdale in Pearl Harbour.

Hugh Grant and Andi McDowell took sixth place with Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Orlando Blom and Keira Knightly didn't steal audience's hearts in Pirates of the Caribbean, with their performance described as "too stiff upper lip".

The 39-year age difference between Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones wasn't lost on the survey's respondents, who failed to respond to their pairing in Entrapment.

Unsurprisingly, Madonna was on the list - her relationship with Adriano Giannini in Swept Away didn't exactly sweep viewers off their feet.But the passion between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain was keenly felt, with 95 percent of viewers convinced by their characters' gay romance.

Lexical coinages reflect change of modern lifeSource: Xinhuanet08-20-2007 14:52Fashionable young Chinese tend to euphemistically use "duan bei" referring to male homosexuals. "Duan bei," with a literal meaning of "brokeback," was borrowed from the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, a R-rated American film directed by Ang Lee.

I love it. We should all learn how to say the literal translation of "Brokeback Mountain" in as many languages as we can. So I think I know how to say "duan bei" in Chinese, but can someone give us a phonetic pronunciation please?

kathy

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They were respectful of each other's opinions, each glad to have a companion where none had been expected.

I love it. We should all learn how to say the literal translation of "Brokeback Mountain" in as many languages as we can. So I think I know how to say "duan bei" in Chinese, but can someone give us a phonetic pronunciation please?

no, the german article refers to the poll pearl&dean had made.3000 people asked who was the worst couple in last years films; and with BBM they said that their performance as people in love didn't convince the audience..

It seems that BBM was 9th in a list of 10 because 95% of the respondents thought that the relationship was believable, and #10, which is Titanic, was MUCH more believable to the respondents.

You see how people can give a spin to the results of a poll? They probably started out with 10 choices in the poll, and #10 is the relationship which people find MOST believable, #9 next, and so on.

Think about it: how many people out there thought that the chemistry in "Titanic" was not believable. Judging from the mass hysteria that greeted this film and the fact that this film is still very popular, I would say that one interpretation of the poll is not saying everything.

Did the German article give the percentages, for example? In most of the articles that put BBM in a bad light, none that I saw gave the exact percentages.

the german article just stated what the english poll had made out of 3000 people asked.. and no, the poll was the other way round... the "worse" couple was porter&hayden - which makes BBM "better", but not as good as titanic...

WTF BTW.. i was just really upset and wanted to talk with you about that.. it was like a personal thing here..

the german article just stated what the english poll had made out of 3000 people asked.. and no, the poll was the other way round... the "worse" couple was porter&hayden - which makes BBM "better", but not as good as titanic...

WTF BTW.. i was just really upset and wanted to talk with you about that.. it was like a personal thing here..

sorry to have bothered you...

Bother?

I was also upset -- but more by the way people put a spin into these things. People just can't give the full truth no? They settle for half-truths, which is another term for a lie...

By Mike Collett-White VENICE (Reuters) - Oscar winner Ang Lee, director of gay cowboy classic "Brokeback Mountain," returns to the theme of forbidden love with a sexually explicit thriller set in the teeming streets of 1940s Shanghai. "Lust, Caution" is based on a short story by Eileen Chang, and follows a group of revolutionary students who hatch a plot to assassinate a powerful political figure who is collaborating with occupying forces during the Sino-Japanese war. First-time actress Tang Wei portrays the young woman who agrees to ensnare the sinister figure, played by one of Asia's biggest screen stars Tony Leung. The movie is in the main competition at the Venice film festival, where Lee won the Golden Lion award with "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005 and went on to garner eight Oscar nominations. Media attention ahead of the new movie's release this year will focus on the long, acrobatic and sometimes disturbing sex scenes between the main characters, which Lee hinted were real. When asked in Venice about the authenticity of the sex, he replied: "Did you see the movie? Then why do you ask?" In a recent interview Lee described his new film as "a scary place," and "like hell." But although lust is used to lure a man into a dangerous trap, love's power also offers a glimmer of hope to characters caught in a world of violence and fear. "Lust, Caution" marks the Taiwan-born director's return to Chinese-language drama after several English films made in the West. He said his position as someone who works in Asia and Hollywood had helped his career. "Being in between two worlds really helped me understand both cultures, the Western culture and particularly my own cultural roots," Lee told reporters in Venice, where the film was having its world premiere later on Thursday. SHORT STORY, LONG FILM East and West meet in "Lust, Caution," with a character visiting a cinema and watching a 1940s English-language classic and a poster for Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 thriller "Suspicion" appearing on the wall.

Lee, who also made "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," said he had to expand on Chang's original story, which was only 28 pages long, for the plot of his two-and-a-half hour film. "The novel had to be just a starting point and not the destination," he said. "I had to get outside the novel, but being faithful to what she wrote, to what she said." The story partly reflects Chang's real-life story, in that she fell in love with a man who was labeled a traitor for collaborating with the Japanese. In the United States, the film has been given an NC-17 rating, the Hollywood Reporter said, meaning no one under 17 will be admitted and limiting its box office potential. Just before the Venice film festival opened on Wednesday, Taiwan protested after "Lust, Caution" was labeled as coming from "Taiwan, China" on Web sites promoting the event. China has seen self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory since the island broke away after civil war in 1949, and seeks to lower Taiwan's profile by asking sports and cultural organizations to add "China" to Taiwan entries. Lee skirted the issue, when asked his opinion. "If you can find out what's going on, please let me know," he said through an interpreter, referring to the confusion surrounding the description.

[But the passion between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain was keenly felt, with 95 percent of viewers convinced by their characters' gay romance.

smh.com.au

You'd have to be dead to not be convinced! After all of these viewings and all of this time I still only see Jack and Ennis on that screen, still get lost in their love.

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“What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger."

You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will live as one ~ Imagine- J. Lennon

Sigh.. I'm sad to hear about their split. All I wish for them is to find what they want in life and for everything to turn out well. I thought this couple was one that was going to last forever. Hollywood couples are known for divorces but something about this couple, told me they were going to last a very long time, maybe a lifetime. I wish them luck!

If you don't mind friends, this is their private life and it's nobody's business but theirs. This is the moderator posting here, we should avoid to discuss this matter since we respect their privacy no matter how sad we feel, Heath and Michelle have been quite explicit about this in the past. Thanks Brokies.